Rachel Thompson, 48, of North St. Paul, said she thinks there are misconceptions about how tariffs work and what their impact will be on American consumers.
鈥淭he misconception is that we鈥檙e being some tough guy and we鈥檙e putting taxes on these countries that we feel we don鈥檛 like or who have wronged us in some kind of misperceived way, but it is a tax on us. It鈥檚 going to cost us more money in the long run,鈥 Thompson said. 鈥淚 think there are some things that we can do to improve our economy, to improve our trade with other countries, but we need to come at it with a scalpel and not a chainsaw.鈥
Politics play a big role in how Americans view the economy. Data from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, considered the gold standard for measuring consumer sentiment, shows respondents whose preferred party is in the White House tend to view the economy more positively and be more optimistic about where it鈥檚 headed.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been seeing these partisan differences in sentiment since at least the Reagan administration,鈥 said Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 not new, though the partisan gap has widened.鈥
The Democratic party struggled under former President Joe Biden to make the case that a good-on-paper economy was good for voters鈥 pocketbooks. Decades-high inflation coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which economists attribute in part to supply chain issues and government stimulus spending, has lingered in the form of higher prices.
鈥淭he No. 1 thing that鈥檚 on people鈥檚 minds right now, and has been for the last three years, has been inflation, cost of living, purchasing power,鈥 Hsu said. 鈥淭he fact that their incomes and their living standards are being eroded by high prices makes people feel like they can鈥檛 get ahead.鈥